Wisconsin Ranks 33rd In Private Sector Jobs In 2016

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The data released Wednesday also provided the most thorough picture yet of job creation since Gov. Scott Walker took office in 2011.

Over the past six years, Wisconsin's private sector labor force grew by about 7.9 percent. That trailed the national rate of 13.2 percent from 2011 to 2016 and ranked 34th among all states.

The last time Wisconsin added jobs faster than the nation as a whole was 2010, the first full year after the end of the Great Recession and the year before Walker took office.

During his first campaign for governor, Walker promised to help the state create 250,000 jobs by the end of 2014. The new numbers show that Wisconsin has added 179,778 private sector jobs since Walker took office, which is still 70,222 jobs short of his first term goal.

These numbers come from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which economists regard as the "gold standard" of job metrics. The QCEW is based on a hard count of reports from nearly all employers, which is why it's so accurate and takes so long to produce.

A total of 28 states lost manufacturing jobs in 2016. Nationally, the manufacturing workforce basically broke even.

Because of that, Wisconsin ranked 30th in manufacturing jobs compared to other states even as it lost 3,784 manufacturing jobs in 2016.

"Manufacturing right now is not a growth area for employment,"Johnston said. "It's more a matter of automation, of substituting capital for labor--that is putting machines in place and computers in place of human beings."

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